Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The Other War!

As our president blathers on endlessly about crispy delicious migrants crossing our southern border, the drug cartels move to take land and control in this country. This is the other war we are currently engaged in, a silent war, a war which only one side has chosen to fight.

Two stories this week point out in stark detail the steps the cartels are taking to consolidate their power in the US...

This story from Vdare notes the almost endless "Lookout points" the cartels maintain inside American borders.

The Mexican drug cartels have staked out lookout posts on high ground up to 200 miles into U.S. territory. There are armed foreign nationals on U.S. soil, protecting their drug shipment routes. Presented with photographic evidence of this Karl Rove pooh-poohed it.

Cardona has been charged with Garcia's murder, but police don't accuse him of pulling the trigger. They say he was the "hookup," the connection between a high-level drug trafficker in Mexico and a rotating cast of teenagers and young men who act as assassins on the U.S. side of the border.

Law enforcement officials have dubbed Cardona's crew "Zetillas," slang for "Baby Zetas," young enforcers for the Gulf Cartel. They are named after the infamous Zetas, defectors from the Mexican military who sided with smugglers in the drug war.

The profile of the Zetillas in Laredo has startled U.S. law enforcement authorities. They're American kids, born on the north side of the Rio Grande. They range in age from 17 to 24.

At least one, Rosalio Reta Jr., a 17-year-old Houston native, was trained at a Gulf Cartel camp in Mexico, law enforcement sources said. At an age when other kids learn how to tie sailor's knots at Boy Scout camps, he learned how to toss explosives.

Law enforcement sources said Cardona and his accomplices present some of the clearest evidence yet that Mexican drug gangs are recruiting and training U.S.-born hitmen to kill on the north side of the Rio Grande, representing a brutal escalation of drug-related border violence.

Detectives recently obtained an arrest warrant for a Gulf Cartel lieutenant named Miguel Treviño Morales, who is accused of ordering all the murders Cardona is charged with, police said.

Generally, the hitmen received $5,000 to $50,000 for murder, depending on their role and the target, records show.

"The reason they're recruiting youngsters like this is because they're easily manipulated," said Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores (no relation to the judge). ''They swing a carrot ... of money, cars, drugs and women, so it's a very catchy deal."

Now the real question is this: Why is our government at it's highest levels turning a blind eye to this activity? Why do they insist that nothing is going on?

I have a theory. The drug cartels have a goodly portion of the Mexican military in their pocket, if we were to make life miserable enough for the cartels would they declare war on the United States using the Mexican military as their proxy?